As American empire is increasingly and effectively challenged by oil rich states such as Russia and Venezuela, episodes such as Pat Robertson’s recent call for Chavez's murder will increase in severity and frequency. Chavez’s revolution in Venezuela has rendered, in crystal clear relief, the differences between nationalist-populism and American vulgarity and neo-liberalism. Chavez has redistributed much unused land to poorer farmers, raised the minimum wage by one-fifth and has spent billions more than his predecessors on education. Both in Presidential elections and in legislative ones, Chavez’s supporters have nearly destroyed the traditional party system in t hat country.
Immediately, the Bush administration spoke of his “rejection of democracy” and referred to Chavez as an “autocrat.” Rich Venezuelan businessmen have quit the country, leading to a capital flight that has hurt the country, in an effort to poison the people against their ever-popular ruler. Putin was quick to respond, pointing out the purely cynical and economic nature of the word “democracy,” and became a staunch ally of Chavez. Similar policies in Belarus and Burma have also led to attacks from the oligarchy and the Bush administration that serves them without question.
Americans are vulgar people. They respond to quick fixes, political slogans and violent solutions to dauntingly complex problems. However, there can be no military intervention in China, Russia or Latin America as almost 200,000 American boys are pinned down my a heroic Iraqi insurgency that has all but defeated the unprepared and green American soldiery.
Therefore, we can see the 12th largest economy in the world–Russia–and China’s military and producing might, now added to the oil producing colossus of Venezuela in building an international coalition of national-populists against the global oligarchy.
Insofar as the “right wing” of the global oligarchy is concerned, neo-liberal economic policies that do great damage to the poor are papered over though symbolic issues such as gay rights or abortion, so as to attract followers who have no use for liberal economic policies. Of course, Robertson, Bennet and crew have no intention of doing any damage to liberal social policies, despite raising billions in their name over the last several generations, but always seem to get their way in terms of taxation and foreign policy. If a national-populist movement was to gather steam in America, this could finally isolate the “right wing” of the ruling class and tear social traditionalists away from a party and movement which does not have the interests of the working poor in mind.
Recently, Chavez offered to provide cheap gasoline to the working poor in America, and Fidel Castro offered free health care and the training of new doctors. In Venezuela, gasoline is cheaper than mineral water, and one can fill his tank for less than $2. Gasoline is not expensive, but it is made expensive, as Chavez himself has said, because of capitalist demands for profits and the skimming of oil speculation.
What Chavez is offering, and what Putin and Lukashenko seek to install in their own countries, is a national-populist principle of “endogenous development.” A similar view has been recently debated among the military brass in Burma. This simply means that the oil wealth coming into Venezuela will be plowed back into localities for “community development.” This development will include financing workers to buy shares in the companies that presently exploit them, thereby giving them a greater share in management.
Liberal democracies and republics in general are oligarchies. Their trajectory of development is very simple: because the members of the various strata of business owners (specifically the upper reaches) are more or less equal, a mechanism of decision-making over the major issues in political economy needed to be developed that took the views of each into account. It is no accident that the birthplace of modern republics had been mercantile Italy during the middle ages. Venice and Genoa were trading republics ruled by an oligarchy who benefitted most from a system of government where property owners formed the ruling classes. Farther north, the Hanseatic league, which included Novgorod, also promoted a republican form of government, one, in Novgorod’s case, that was ended by absolute monarchy (specifically Ivan III), the eternal and undying enemy of oligarchy. The founding of the United States was also done to protect a group of Anglo-Saxon property owners from the poor living in the Appalachian mountains and elsewhere, who were ethnically different from the ruling classes. Such men were represented by Daniel Shea, who led an unsuccessful rebellion against the planter ascendency. Populist rebellions quickly led to the creation of the Constitution, in secret, which tightened oligarchic, Federalist rule over America. As more and more groups demanded the “franchise,” the means of oligarchic control became more and more subtle. Oligarchy never ceased, and the handful of wealthy families who control most of the world’s wealth simply turned so such mechanisms as psychological warfare, “civil rights,” and sexual liberation to manipulate their subject peoples.
Regardless, Chavez has opened up a fissure within global politics in a manner like that of Shea in early America. They both exposed the rather naked rule of oligarchy and methods proper to it within the functioning of international political economy. It is this fissure that will be exploited by Russia and China as these two powerful nations continue to develop. As the Bush administration continues to seek the subversion of all populist states throughout the world, the reaction to it, led by Moscow, will become more and more acute, as well as becoming more and more conscious of their historic role.
For quite some time, it has been habitual among the talking classes to either ignore or ridicule agrarians. As evolution is at the basis of all modern ideology and all political debate, the notion that the development of technology, or the idea that “humans can advance their own evolution” has been held without question. The all-pervasive slang term “backward,” has been applied to all countries and peoples who have maintained an agrarian way of life, and this goes very far to expose the reasons for the white-hot hatred of the ruling classes in America to the Southern states and those there involved with agriculture.
Without getting into the anti-modernist and anti-capitalist vision that undergirds agrarianism, the western world, brought to the brink of destruction by greed and the individualist ideology that undergirds it, will be forced to rethink agrarianism.
The primary reason for this is the increasing demand for alternative fuels. My old friend John Tiffany at The American Free Press has penned a number of articles on the tremendous boost the alternative fuels groups have received from the extremely high prices of gas in America. Now, as much as we need to condemn the notion that high gas prices affect only the poor and lower working classes, the more significant point is that it is Americans themselves who have brought high gas prices down on them. The explosion of SUV’s 8-to years ago, Mustang GT’s and ‘Vettes have sucked down an already inelastic supply of refined petroleum, and the absurd war in the Persian Gulf has also sucked away petroleum that would have been used to cushion the American market.
Regardless, the point is that Americans are looking into alternative fuels, and, for a few, actually demanding that more money be allocated for research into this field. For generations, alternative fuel engines have been in existence and could have easily been placed into mass production, but, as it well known, the powerful oil industry and the numerous think-tanks they fund have blocked all further mention of such technologies.
The result of all this is that the farming life might well have new life breathed into it. Ethanol (corn syrup, though it can be made from almost anything) is one thing, but alternative fuels have also been developed that derive from sugar cane and various fruits. Therefore, from being a despised minority of the population, American agriculture might move into the dominant place in life, being at the foundation of the alternative fuels movement. Farming communities can be revitalized as the demand for ethanol and its own alternatives increase.
The fact that Russia is a dominant oil exporter is irrelevant here. Petroleum, regardless of alternative fuels, will always be a dominant commodity. What is of greater significance is that Russia is placed in a very powerful position also in the alternative fuels market. Sugar beets can easily be converted into fuel, as research in the west has long understood. Russia can utilize its massive land area in producing beets and corn (never huge in Russia) for the alternative fuels market. Russia can use its substantial scientific community to combine various alternative with natural gas and oil, creating inexpensive alternatives to gasoline. As a result, Russian agriculture will explode.
Of course, there is more here than just economics. The agrarian lifestyle is healthier and more natural. Life in a factory is rigid, dehumanizing and destructive. Though the USSR, laughably incompetent in the agricultural sphere, did poison some of Russia’s land through inappropriate use of chemicals, but this has not stood in the way of a substantial gain in Russian agriculture in the past 6 or 7 years. Milk output, for example, has doubled since 2003.
Russian farmers during the Yeltsin administration proved they were uninterested in running farms on the western model. Russian agriculture has always been communal, and the communal form of agriculture made Russia dominant in this field in the early 20th century. Imperial Russia recorded amazing productivity gains using the communal system, and very few were interested in either Witte’s ideas (or Yeltsin’s, for that matter).
Alternative fuels might well recreate agrarian economies, and farmers who suddenly find themselves in massive demand. Both Russia and the United States are massive producers of grain, which can be processed and distilled into “gasohol,” a very promising alternative fuel recently featured at major scientific congresses. In the Russian case, this will reverse disturbing demographic trends, as farming families realize that more children are better than fewer, and Russians will increasingly move away from congested and dirty cities to live the lives of their ancestors, in agrarian communal associations producing important components of the alternative fuel revolution. Even Russia’s huge Sunflower seed production has been tested as an alternative fuel. What is more important is that the authoritarian domestication of the factory will slowly give way to the communal farmstead and free, local communal social, political and economic organization.
Several difficulties might be noted. Firstly, Russia’s arable land amounts to just over 8%, though modern techniques can expand this. Secondly, the western connected Russian oligarchs will do all in their power to fight this, as the existence of independent farmsteads and communes, on the model of the Imperial Russian ideal, will be a major blow to the centralized “democracy” so enamored of westernized Russians from the Decembrists to Yabloko. The fact that Russia is in a position to be dominant in alternative and traditional fuels sits very uncomfortable with western elites, unless they figure a way to manipulate this revolution to their own ends.
When Yeltsin, taking orders from western capital, ordered the dissolution of both voluntary collectives and coercive ones, few Russians responded. The difficulties inherent in Russian agriculture do not lend themselves to individual farming, and, as a result, the expansion of agriculture given the need for alternative fuels will either be done by huge farm monopolies or by independent communes. It seems, at present, there is no third alternative. But there is no question that the state can encourage independent communes and discourage agribusiness, tricky as this might be. Either way, it remains the case that agricultural life is about to get a boost.